


Same As It Ever Was (The Road to Recovery Remix)

by listerinezero



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Baby Mutants, Erik Has Feelings, M/M, Post-DOFP, Recovery, Xavier Institute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 05:49:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4694399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/listerinezero/pseuds/listerinezero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik has been keeping a low profile since Washington, but when he meets a young mutant in need of a home, he seeks out Charles once again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Same As It Ever Was (The Road to Recovery Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heyjupiter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyjupiter/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Imaginary Life Journey](https://archiveofourown.org/works/259013) by [heyjupiter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyjupiter/pseuds/heyjupiter). 



> A remix of Erik finding Nightcrawler, this time by himself.

Erik studied the small, blurry newspaper photo as he waited for the waitress to return with the coffee pot. The Munich Circus had taken a quarter-page advertisement in the Montreal Gazette which highlighted a few of their acts. There was an elephant, an acrobat, a man swallowing a sword, and the picture that drew Erik’s attention: The Incredible Nightcrawler. The text described him as a blue devil, with the tail of a monkey and the ears of an elf, whose amazing feats must be seen to be believed.

Erik couldn’t make out much from the newspaper photo. It was black and white, and too small and blurry for Erik to tell if any of the description was accurate. The man could have been wearing makeup, or if the whole thing might have been entirely fabricated. But Erik had been hiding out in Montreal for nearly ten months, and this was the first time he’d seen any sign of another mutant. Erik hadn’t seen much beyond his immediate neighborhood for a while, but recently the rest of world felt like it was coming back into focus.

The waitress returned and refilled his coffee cup without asking. He’d been coming to this diner for breakfast nearly every morning, and she’d stopped asking if he wanted a refill about eight months ago.

“Excuse me,” he asked her. “How far is this?” He pointed to the location listed for the circus. “Can I get there on the STM or do I need to drive?”

The waitress gaped at him amazed, as though it was the ketchup bottle that had turned around and started asking questions in perfect French. “If you take the bus to the metro you can get there in about forty-five minutes. Over an hour if you walk to the metro.” She put her hand on her hip and grinned at him. “Sir, you’ve been coming in here for almost a year and you have never once asked me anything that wasn’t to do with breakfast!”

Erik shrugged. “Usually when I come here all I want is breakfast.”

“What’s your name?”

“Max,” Erik said, after a moment’s consideration.

“Jacqueline,” said the waitress. Erik knew that, of course - she wore a nametag every day - but he’d never actually called her by name before.

“Are you taking your kids to the circus? Do you have kids?” asked Jacqueline.

“No. No kids.”

“Well, a trip to the circus sounds like fun.” Jacqueline smiled a bit, and when she leaned over to take a dirty plate off the table, she took care to make sure that her breasts were in Erik’s eyeline. She had no idea how many ways she was barking up the wrong tree.

Erik pulled his wallet from his pocket and put down enough cash to cover breakfast, tip, and bruised feelings. “Thank you,” he told her as he folded up the newspaper and stood from the table. “I’ll walk.”

 

 

The trip to the circus via public transportation was closer to an hour and a half, but Erik didn’t mind. He had nothing else to do that day, or any day, really. He’d come to Montreal for the sake of getting off U.S. soil after the whole scene with the Sentinels and the White House and Charles, intending to move on from there. He never did. He considered going back to Europe or Buenos Aires or Israel, but his indecision kept him in Montreal.

In all that time that Erik spent beneath the Pentagon, he always thought that when he got out of there (and he knew he would eventually) he would never want to be alone again. He was wrong. Perhaps going immediately from solitary confinement to a globetrotting mission of espionage and terrorism fueled by charged reunions with Charles, Hank, and Mystique and a couple dozen television reporters thrown in the mix was not the wisest choice. Everything from the moment he saw that tray that said “MIND THE GLASS” to the morning he woke up in a Quebecois hotel room was a blur.

He only meant to stay one night. Now, after nearly a year, he was starting to feel like his old self again.

Just in the past few weeks he'd begun to consider his next steps. He was ready to leave Montreal and take up the cause once again, but what that meant exactly, he had no idea. This morning he opened a newspaper and saw a mutant looking back at him. He didn’t know what he would do when he met this man, or what his message was going to be, but it was time for Erik to be Magneto again.

It was still early in the day when Erik arrived at the fairgrounds where the Munich Circus was set up for the next three weeks, and there weren’t many people around. The show didn’t start until evening. There was a good chance this Nightcrawler person was out. Still, Erik wandered around until he found a man who appeared to be in charge.

“ _Bonjour_. I’m looking for the man they call Nightcrawler. Is he here?” Erik asked.

The man gave him an odd look. “Nightcrawler?” His accent was German. Of course - this was the Munich Circus and Erik was speaking in French.

“ _Ja_.” He switched to German and repeated: “I’m looking for the man they call Nightcrawler. Is he here?”

The man looked at him as though he had asked to speak to the moon. “The man they call Nightcrawler?” he repeated back. “What do you want with him?”

“I’m an old friend of his,” said Erik. “We went to school together.”

Now the man crossed his arms over his chest, turning confrontational. “Is that so? Held back a few times, were you? What do you want?”

Erik had no idea what he meant. He wondered if his German had become so rusty that he misunderstood. That didn’t seem possible - he’d been speaking French exclusively for a while now, but German was his first language. He didn’t think it was physically possible to forget one’s first language.

Confused, Erik continued. “I was just hoping to speak to him for a few minutes. Is he here?”

There was a strange clap behind Erik, like tiny thunder, and a small voice said, “ _Grüß Gott_.”

“Kurt, get out of here!” the man said.

Erik turned to see who he was speaking to. It had to be Nightcrawler - blue skin, tail, pointed ears, yellow eyes, all exactly as described in the newspaper. Except that he was a child. The newspaper hadn’t mentioned that Nightcrawler was a child. Erik just assumed he was an adult.

“I heard my name,” said Nightcrawler. He looked at Erik. “Who are you?”

The miscommunication suddenly became clear, and Erik backtracked. “My name is Erik,” he said. “I went to school with your father. I’m an old friend of his.”

“Oh,” the man said, less hostile than a minute earlier. “I thought you said you went to school with Kurt.”

“Sorry,” said Erik. “My German is a little rusty. I knew his father.” He turned back to Nightcrawler - no, Kurt. “I wanted to meet you. Is it okay if we talk?”

Kurt glanced at the man for permission before they walked a little ways away for some privacy. They sat down at a picnic table behind a nearby trailer.

“You knew my father?” Kurt asked. He looked delighted.

Erik, on the other hand, felt like an idiot. What on Earth was he supposed to do now?

“Um, yes. I think so,” he lied. “Do you know his name?”

“No,” said Kurt. “Herr Weber says I have no parents. He says I am a circus baby.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m eight.”

An eight year old, Erik thought miserably. It was bad enough that he’d come here to meet an adult without a plan, but to come here and find a child and have nothing to offer him was awful. Worse yet: he just lied to an orphan about knowing his parents. That was just cruel. Unintentional, yes, but cruel just the same.

“So...” Erik began, not knowing what to say. “Are they good to you?”

“Who?”

“The circus, the people here. Are they treating you well?”

Kurt shrugged. “I guess so. We travel a lot. It’s boring. I don’t like doing the shows, but Herr Weber gets mad if I don’t bamf when they tell me to.”

“Bamf?” asked Erik. “What is bamf?”

Kurt smiled, then -  _BAMF! -_ another sound like tiny thunder and a puff of smoke, and Kurt was sitting next to Erik. A minute later,  _BAMF!_  Kurt was on top of the trailer looking down at him.  _BAMF!_  He was back in his original seat at the picnic table across from Erik, looking pleased with himself. “That is bamf,” he said.

A teleporter, thought Erik. An eight year old teleporter. He looked again at Kurt, at his tail and his eyes and full-body coloring. Perhaps Erik knew this child’s father after all.

“Azazel,” he said, his voice suddenly hoarse. “Your father’s name was Azazel. He was a teleporter, too. He looked like you, but his skin was red, not blue.”

Kurt looked dumbstruck. “Really?”

“Really. At least I think so. He had to be - what are the chances it could have been someone else?”

Erik and Kurt stared at each other for a few minutes, both stunned.

“Wow,” said Kurt.

“Yeah,” Erik agreed. “Wow.” He sighed and put his face in his hands, trying to get a handle on what was happening. Azazel had fathered a child. A child with obvious physical mutations and the ability to teleport. The boy’s mother, whoever she was, had dumped him with a circus rather than raise him as her own. He was being forced to perform his mutation for audiences, like the animals forced to jump through hoops in the center ring. This had to be one of the most miserable scenarios Erik could conceive of for a young mutant, and he’d only discovered all of this by accident.

“Do you believe in fate?” Erik asked Kurt. He felt a little silly getting metaphysical with an eight year old, until Kurt replied.

“The Bible teaches divine providence. God has a plan for all of us.”

Erik frowned. “The Bible?”

“Yes. Fräulein Liesl teaches me from the Bible every day. She’s one of the acrobats.” Kurt was sitting up straight and had his hands folded together on the table in front of him.

“Does Fräulein Leisl teach you any mathematics or science?” Erik asked.

“The Bible has science in it,” said Kurt. “And I learn about the animals we have here from the trainers.”

Un-fucking-believable, thought Erik. He wanted to bang his head on the table. “Divine providence,” he grumbled to himself.

“Why did you want to meet me?” Kurt asked. “Do you know where my father is?”

“I’m sorry, Kurt, but he died a few years ago.”

Kurt’s face fell. “Oh.”

“But I wanted to tell you how I knew him.” Erik pulled his three silver balls out of his pocket and swirled them in the air over his open hand. “Your father, Azazel, could teleport. I can manipulate metal. There are others like us in the world, Kurt. Mutants. People born with extraordinary abilities.”

“Whoa,” Kurt gasped.

“The circus - Herr Weber - they keep you here and call you a freak. They ask people for money and then let them point and stare at you. But you are not a freak. You are one of us, Kurt, and our kind is the future. We are the superior race.”

“The Bible says we are all one in Christ our Lord.”

Erik’s instinct was to snap at Kurt for invoking Christianity against mutant superiority, but he reminded himself that Kurt was a child. He was Azazel’s child. The way Kurt said it, Erik could see how eager he was, and how proud to have an answer. He wasn’t being willfully anti-Semitic: he was parroting his only teacher. Erik’s tattooed arm was right in front of Kurt, but Kurt didn’t seem to notice or know what it meant. His words only reflected how little education and exposure to the world outside the circus he’d had. He was a little boy who was saying what he thought he was supposed to say.

Erik ignored the religious rhetoric and continued. “You, me, others like us… we can do things that most people can’t even imagine. And look at you - you’re proof that our children and our children’s children will have these abilities, too. Imagine all the things that mutants will do. We have the whole world at our fingertips.”

He waited for Kurt to say something, but Kurt just stared at him, looking confused. After a few minutes he just said, “Cool.”

“That’s all you have to say? Cool?”

“I don’t know,” Kurt shrugged. “What do you want me to say?”

Erik had no idea. He didn’t know what he was supposed to say, either, or what he was supposed to do.

Kurt was getting antsy. He was looking around and kicking his legs under the table (his feet didn’t quite reach the ground from the bench). “Can I go play now?”

Erik sighed. “Yeah. I guess so.”

He watched as Kurt got up from the bench and started running, then teleported a little further, then continued running, then teleported again out of sight. He was a good kid. He was polite and well behaved. Azazel would have been proud of him, Erik thought. However, Azazel would not have been happy if he knew his son was being used as a circus display and denied an education. But what was Erik going to do? Bring him back to Montreal and play house? Send him off to the public elementary school with a brown bag lunch and a pat on the head?

Divine providence, Erik thought miserably. Fate.

“Kurt?” he called out. “Kurt, can you come back here? I want to ask you something.”

 

 

Erik would have preferred to take the train down to New York. He loved train travel. A metal cabin gliding on metal rails, the magnetic fields swirling all around in constant motion while he relaxed comfortably inside of it - it was an oddly luxurious sensation for him. Unfortunately, he was a fugitive crossing an international border with a visibly mutant child who wasn’t his own and neither of them had any legal paperwork allowing them to do so. Train travel was out of the question. They had to get a car, and they had to get creative.

They crossed from Quebec into Vermont, from a road that didn’t actually approach the border. Instead of driving, Erik raised the car off the ground and floated it above a rural, forested area of the U.S.-Canada border. When Erik saw a road for them to land on, he hovered above it for a while until he was sure no other car was coming from either direction to see them touch down. Even if someone did see them, no one would believe the story. The crossing felt safe to Erik.

Kurt said he could teleport away if anyone saw them, and Erik heard himself telling Kurt not to leave his sight because he worried and he had to keep Kurt safe. It was as if the words had come from someone else’s mouth.

It was well past midnight when they passed a sign that read “Leaving Putnam County.” Ten feet later, a sign read, “Welcome to Westchester County.” Erik was having a hard time keeping his eyes open. He smacked his own cheeks and opened his eyes and mouth as wide as he could to avoid highway hypnosis. The radio would have been more effective, but Kurt was sleeping peacefully in the backseat, and Erik didn’t want to wake him.

He had to check the map again. Erik pulled over to the side of the road and unfolded the map he’d picked up at a gas station a few miles back. He’d also purchased a small flashlight, which he turned on carefully to make sure he didn’t accidentally shine it at Kurt’s face. He traced his finger down the line that marked the Taconic Parkway. North Salem was southeast of where they were. He’d have to turn off the highway and take local roads. They were almost there.

Thirty minutes and two wrong turns later, Erik heard Charles’ voice in his head.

 _The only reason I let you get even this close is because you have a child with you,_  said Charles.  _Otherwise I’d have you drive directly to the police station._

Erik’s heart raced, and he pulled over again.  _I know. But what am I supposed to do?_

Instead of words, Charles replied with a feeling of frustrated resignation.

Erik hesitated, then asked,  _Am I going the right way?_

 _Just drive,_  Charles replied.  _I’ll guide you._

They were closer than Erik thought. It was only a few more minutes before Erik looked around and realized he recognized where he was. The gate opened and Erik drove right up to the front of the house. Not the house: the school, he corrected himself.

Only one light appeared to be on, somewhere on the top floor. As Erik got out of the car and stretched, another light turned on downstairs, and by the time Erik had opened the passenger side door and lifted still-sleeping Kurt into his arms, the front light turned on and the door opened.

Charles looked good. He was in his wheelchair again. He still wore a beard, but he’d cut his hair to a style a bit more put-together. Instead of the old striped pajamas he slept in back when he shared his bed with Erik, he had on a sleeveless white undershirt and flannel pants. It suddenly occurred to Erik that he hadn’t had sex since that night on the plane to Paris, and along with that thought, Erik realized he was staring. Everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours – no, in the last twelve years – it all seemed to disappear. So much had changed, but this feeling, seeing Charles again, was the same as it ever was.

Charles said nothing, but moved his chair backward and gestured for Erik to come inside. He carried Kurt up the steps and into the school’s foyer.

It actually looked like a school, Erik thought as he followed Charles down the hall. Everything had all changed so much, yet it still felt so familiar. Charles led them to where the guest rooms were, where Sean and Alex and Angel had slept back in 1962. Now each door was labeled as a dorm room.

Erik followed Charles into a room labeled ‘Dormitory - 103’ and gently lay Kurt onto the bed. At first Kurt just rolled onto his side as if to sleep, but instead he awoke with a start.

“ _Was? Wo bin ich?_ ” he asked, looking around in a panic. ( _What? Where am I?)_

 _“Mach dir keine Sorgen. Alles ist gut. Wir sind hier,”_  said Erik. _(Don’t worry. Everything is fine. We’re here.)_

 Kurt relaxed a bit upon seeing Erik, but frowned toward Charles. “ _Wer ist das?” (Who is that?)_

_"Das ist Charles. Ich habe dir von ihm erzählt. Schlaf weiter. Du wirst ihn am Morgen treffen.” (This is Charles. I told you about him. Go back to sleep. You will meet him in the morning.)_

Charles turned on the teacher-charm and smiled at Kurt. “You’re safe here. I promise. Get some sleep, and you’ll see everything in the morning.” He must have conveyed that telepathically, too, because Kurt looked relieved. He tucked himself under the blankets.

“ _Danke,_ ” he said quietly. Then to Charles: “Thank you.”

“ _Gute Nacht,”_ said Erik. “ _Schlaf gut.” (Good night. Sleep well.)_

Erik followed Charles out of the room and back out to the common area. The last time Erik was here, Charles referred to this room as the sitting room. Now it looked more like a study lounge, filled with tables and comfortable chairs and plenty of nooks and crannies where a student could get some reading done. Erik had liked this room then, and he liked this room now. Some things never change, no matter how different they may seem.

Erik spoke first. “Thank you. I’m sorry for surprising you like this.” He gestured at his head. “Did you see what happened? Where I found him?”

“No, I haven’t read your mind,” Charles said stiffly. “Aside from finding you lost and on your way here with a mutant child, that is. I didn’t look any further.”

“You can,” said Erik. “You can look.”

“Thank you, but I’d rather not,” he snapped, then sighed. “I don’t mind you bringing him here, but you realize the school hasn’t actually reopened yet.” With each word, Charles softened, just slightly.

“Oh. No, I didn’t know that.” Erik ran a hand over his face and rubbed at his eyes. Exhaustion was creeping in on him, breaking down all his barriers. “I didn’t know what to do. He was in the circus. He had no parents. He wasn’t going to school. He was just a freak in the show. I couldn’t leave him there. I thought you would know what to do.” He took a breath. “I think he must be Azazel’s. He can teleport.” He shook his head and said again, “I didn’t know what to do.”

“It’s all right,” Charles said gently. He took Erik’s hand and led him to a chair. “Sit down.”

He did. And he didn’t let Charles let go of his hand. Instead he took Charles’ hand in both of his, stroking it with his thumb. Some things never change, no matter how different they may seem.

“Where have you been?” Charles asked.

“Montreal.”

Charles smirked with surprise. “Montreal? Of all the places in the world?”

“I only meant to stay for one night, just to get some rest. But then…”

Charles’ eyes met his. “Then what?”

Erik shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t know what to do next. So I just stayed there for a while.”

Something in Charles’ expression changed, but Erik didn’t know what it was. Recognition, perhaps. Or understanding. “You were recovering,” he said softly.

Recovering. That was not a word Erik had ever associated with himself, not after the war, and certainly not after his time in solitary confinement. But he was too tired to argue, and Charles was holding his hand.

“I don’t think you should drive any more until you've had some rest,” Charles said. “I understand if you would rather not, but you're welcome to stay here for the night.”

Erik hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “All right. Just for one night."

Charles squeezed his hand and nodded. “Of course. One night."

 

**Author's Note:**

> I took one semester of German, and I used my old textbook, a German-English dictionary, AND Google Translate, and I'm still not sure the German phrases are correct! Apologies for any errors. I really tried. German is hard!


End file.
